


To Himling: Part Two

by vetiverite



Series: To Himling [2]
Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Brain Injury, Brothers, Coma, Durin Family, Durin Family Angst, Durin Family Feels, Durincest, Dwarf Culture & Customs, Dwarven Ones | Soulmates, Dwarven Politics, Dysfunctional Family, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Espionage, Gentle Sex, Ghost Thorin, Ghost Thrain, Hurt/Comfort, Husbands, Intrigue, M/M, Post-Battle of Five Armies, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Seizures, Sibling Incest, Sibling Love, Slow Burn, Soulmates, Supernatural Elements, Tauriel? Who's Tauriel?, tropes tropes tropes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-25
Updated: 2019-07-25
Packaged: 2020-07-10 10:49:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 5,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19904515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vetiverite/pseuds/vetiverite
Summary: The brothers grow stronger and cope with the death of their uncle, but the ghosts of war will not be ignored.





	1. Return

**Author's Note:**

> Many, many thanks to MSilverstar.

True to prediction, the snow melted; spring raised Fíli and Kíli to their feet. 

The first sign of new life was the scent of browned butter wafting from the kitchen. Fenja found the brothers in the middle of a mess, devouring a platter of fried bread and honey. _You’re cleaning that up,_ she informed them, and they gazed at her with such blank innocence, you’d think they’d never grown up and gone to war after all. 

The second sign was two sets of wet footprints disappearing up the back stairs. 

None regard the bath as solemnly as Khazâd. For them, its bounties reach beyond cleanliness of body and beard to soundness of mind and soul. Thorinutumnu's bath-hall reflected this ethos. Once a lowly cavern sheltering a mere trickle of coldspring, it had been transformed by Thorin into a spacious chamber with a deep cistern filled with furnace-heated seawater. 

It was here that Fíli and Kíli hurried as soon as the healers deemed them clear of danger. They'd been kept from it far longer than most, and now a plunge was all they could think about. 

_Oh, brother,_ sighed Fíli, sinking down into the steaming water. Kíli – absorbed in scrubbing himself clean with a mixture of white sand, fine salt, and dried herbs – grinned like a prisoner freed from a dungeon. After their shared hot soak, they cooled off at the coldspring and then rested by the hearth with a sense of returning hope and wholeness. 

Such renewal reaped further advances. On a morning soon after, the siblings resumed their weapons training. In younger days, they would have lacked the humility to ask; now they approached Bhurin the fighting master with manners so deferential that he nearly laughed. 

To his surprise, Fíli and Kíli did exactly – _but exactly!_ – what he told them to do, and not a single thing more. Small steps. Cautious movements. Nothing reckless, nothing forbidden. This was the law Bhurin set down, and the brothers followed it to the letter. 

Every day, Fíli heeded Dís and schooled himself in patience. What earthly good had rashness produced? Him, disgraced; Kíli, damaged; Thorin, dead. Now constancy would be a tonic, swallowed without complaint. 

In other ways he was less tractable. 

A frigid welcome awaited the elders who came to inspect their sovereign. Although Dís strictly forbade them to mention Thorin or the war in front of Kíli, a few of them blundered too close and were swiftly brought to heel by Fíli. His cold courtesy – so reminiscent of Thorin! – made Dís smile. Her firstborn had learned the art of arrogance from a master. 

She might not have been so proud of Fíli if she had stayed in the room. 

Ninur of Balbûnzudnu – the eldest of the elders and a dwarf of surpassing wisdom, experience, and forbearance – said, _Your Highness, it is time we measured what knowledge of statecraft Thorin imparted to his Heir._

Fíli’s response was unusually curt. _What do you expect me to know? If Uncle had ruled for a hundred years, I would have learnt at his side as he would have learnt from Thráin, and Thráin from Thrór had they not been exiled. Me, I know how to build a fire, forge a sword, and swing it— and that is all._  
  
_You must learn. We will teach you._  
  
_In my mother’s parlor?_ Fíli’s tone would wither a field of barley. _In the stable with the ponies?_

Out in the hallway, Kíli pressed his forehead hard against the doorjamb. 

_Your Highness…_  
  
_No. So long as I am in Thorinutumnu, my name is Fíli son of Dís, and I am still in mourning for my Uncle and King. When I am in Erebor, you may throw any stack of books you like at me; until then, my education will keep._

He could not see Kíli’s eyes darken at the name _Erebor_.


	2. Neighbors

Winter confinement frays tempers thin, but a remedy lies in reach. Now the weather had turned; by Dís’ reckoning, one day of leisure might yield a peace worth every unwashed dish or unswept floor. She proposed a trip into town. 

Bhurin deemed the mountain path too ice-slick yet for ponies’ hooves, so Dís ordered push sleighs. _For carrying supplies back home,_ she fibbed, but earnest Kíli shook his head. _Mim’s leg hurts,_ he stated. _He should ride._

Fíli looked at them both with gratitude. _I will if I may._

The day dawned pure and bright, with a breeze shaking the last rime from the pine boughs. The bell-like tinkle of meltwater dripping from the eaves lent an air of springtime hope to Thorinutumnu. Bundled in felts and furs, the household gathered in the courtyard, sending up clouds of vapor with their talk and laughter. 

All the way down the hill, Kíli walked with an arrow nocked in his bow, while Fíli in the sleigh kept one hand on his throwing dagger. Watching them, Dís mulled over the unseen workings of her sons’ minds. Would any ground – even their own by ancestral right – ever feel entirely safe to them again? 

In town, Fíli regained both his feet and his courage. He lifted his face, listening for sounds from the forge. Were he a wild cat, his tail would quiver and his ears twitch. 

_Go on!_ Dís gaily called to him. _You want to, and you should!_  
  
_Are you coming?_ he asked Kíli, who shook his head and slid behind his mother. 

As Dís and Kíli wandered through the village, old friends came forward to greet and share breath with them. None shied away from the fact of Kíli’s frailty; nor did they miss the chance to praise his strength. Most of all, they treated him as what he was and had always been: one of their own, known and well-loved. 

At the agreed-upon hour, Thorin’s folk gathered outside the tavern. While Halmin the alemaster handed around hot bragget, Dís once more had cause to ponder. What would Thráin and Thrór have made of all this? Their Heirs walked instead of rode, chatted with shopkeepers, hung around forges and caroused in the town square. They had friends and neighbors, not courtiers and leeches. Instead of a gold-hoard, they had inherited the earth. 

On the hike back up to Thorinutumnu, the travelers sang an old song of home: 

_When we reach the mountain_  
_Our sorrows will go,_  
 _the cares of our people_  
 _will melt with the snow..._

Fíli and Kíli sang along with everyone else, and when the word _mountain_ passed their lips, they could have meant any one of a hundred.


	3. Altar

It was a strange first territory Fíli claimed for the Crown. 

_Whyever would you want to stay in the sickroom?_ Dís demanded. 

_It has a view,_ replied Fíli. 

This puzzled Dís greatly. Her sons’ old quarters exactly fit the Khuzd ideal: warm, dark, cavelike, protected. How could they wish for anything else? 

_But you’ve been cooped up for months,_ she said. _Aren’t you tired of living on top of one another?_  
  
_We like it._

Dís conceded on this point; they always had, and she knew it. But she persisted: _You have your own room already. All your things are there._ Not quite accurate, for already a good deal of said belongings had mysteriously migrated. 

The debate might have continued interminably had not Kíli given Dís a sweet, sad, close-lipped smile. _We w-were children in the old room,_ he said. _It was good. But it’s all gone._

A year ago Dís might have accused Kíli of merely following Fíli’s lead. But Fíli would never have expressed such a thought on his own; perhaps their roles had reversed. She studied her youngest closely. The clumsy child once teasingly called Echo had become a man who spoke his own mind. 

_Then tell me what to do with the old room,_ she challenged him. 

His prompt answer: _Lll... leave it to us. We'll turn it into a shrine ff-for Uncle._

Dís regarded her menfolk with bittersweet satisfaction. She hated to enter Thorin’s quarters. It tore her heart open anew to see his belongings just as he had left them, yet she knew they couldn’t remain untouched forever. Clearly, Fíli and Kíli understood this. If they could not erase her grief, they at least wished to spare her its torments. 

Her sons, so grown, so good in their hearts. 

So she let them pack away their childhood and make a memorial to Thorin in the heart of her house. Let Erebor enshrine his weapons and armor; instead they arrayed his humble forge tools on the altar and hung his harp upon the wall. 

On the night of the full moon, Dís lit the altar lamps that from that time forward would burn in perpetuity. While she and her sons prayed, Fenja distributed mead to the household. One by one, each spoke an ode to Thorin and quaffed their cup. 

Then Fíli stepped forward, composed despite the tears silvering his cheeks. _He was our father,_ was all he said of Thorin— yet somehow this simple acknowledgment reverberated more than any lengthy eulogy. Four words unlocked a thousand tears that night. 

_I am so proud of you,_ Dís told Fíli and Kíli. _And Uncle is, too._


	4. Map

It remained for the brothers to pack up Thorin’s effects, an act more final in its own way than a burial. 

Dís had proposed they convert her brother’s quarters into a household library, installing all of their books and papers alongside Thorin’s own. She planned to bring in work tables, benches, an extra desk or two. _Maybe then,_ she reckoned, _Fíli will look upon it as a classroom._

Thorin’s rooms smelled as they always had: like leather, parchment, incense, stone. But his father-scent was fading. Neither Fíli nor Kíli could define it; they knew only the security it had offered. As children they sought it amongst his clothes, his hoods, the bed pillows upon which his head had rested. Now it was nearly gone. The ghost of a ghost. 

Empty wooden caskets waited to be filled and sealed. Fíli scratched his beard. _Where on earth do we start?_  
  
_Anywhere_ , resolute Kíli replied. _Just start._

They divided up their uncle’s clothes— too large for either, though they’d wear them anyway. Each made off with a bed pillow, and Kíli tried on Thorin’s boots. They took the carven stone box containing his hair ornaments and the pomade that had imbued his braids with scents of spikenard and labdanum. It wasn’t the father-smell – that had followed Thorin where none could reach – but its familiarity deprived loss of its sting. 

From time to time, memories slowed the brothers down. When one faltered, the other said, _I know,_ and so they managed to continue their task. 

It was while sorting through their uncle’s archives that Kíli found the map, hand-drawn on stiff cured hide. 

_Mim, look,_ he said, excited. _It’s Himling._

Fíli balanced it on his fingertips. _I didn’t know Uncle ever went there._  
  
_Nor I._

Two heads bowed to study the map’s coves and hills and ruins. One especial detail cried out: in tiny letters next to an arrow, the words _ENTRANCE TO TROLL CAVE._

_He rrrr-re-remembered our plan,_ Kíli marveled. _I thhh...think he made this for us._

By nightfall it would find a home atop their shared wardrobe, enclosed in a pewter frame with a rock crystal face, their chosen souvenirs of Thorin ranged in front of it. The smallest of shrines, but perhaps the most powerful. 

Then all was done and settled, lids hammered on and boxes labeled, the artifacts of one man’s life interred in a lightless vault, as it must be. The long struggle was over.


	5. Phantoms

The first ghost appeared during drills. With one overhand swing of Fíli’s wooden practice sword, his peace came apart. 

_The blade whistled through the air and cleaved the orc’s skull as far down as its eye socket. Black blood as thick as tar exploded outward, befouling Fíli’s hands as he tried to wrench the sword from the bone. A section of skull broke away, and the metal slid free in a slick of gore and gobbets of brain. The orc’s cloven eye followed, dangling down by a thread onto its leathery grey cheek. But its other eye—_

Fíli screamed and stumbled backward, flinging away the sword. 

From a tremendous distance, he heard Master Bhurin call out, _Lad, what is it?_ and Kíli cry, _Fíli! Fíli!_ But they stood not a yard away; it was Bhurin’s practice shield that Fíli’s blade had shattered. Reflexively he looked down at his hands; he did not want his brother to see the black blood. 

Clean. They were clean. And he sprawled on the cold ground of the practice yard, home in Thorinutumnu.

___________________

The next ghost came to Kíli in the sitting room. 

The brothers joined their mother there each evening before bedtime. Wedged together in a comfortable old settee, they watched Dís carve ivory or shape silver on her little jeweler’s anvil. While she and Fíli talked, Kíli’s head slowly dipped toward his brother’s shoulder. From time to time he opened his eyes and smiled gently; this was his contribution. 

That evening, as Dís read aloud another letter from Ori, Fíli felt his brother’s body tense. He turned to see Kíli staring in terror at a point just beyond their mother’s shoulder. His face went slack, his body went rigid, and he lay shuddering and drooling in Fíli’s arms. 

_What was it? What did you see?_ Fíli demanded of him later, in their room. 

All Kíli would say was, _The war._

___________________

Soon it had the run of the house. It stood behind every door, waited around every corner, loomed over every bedside. 

Sometimes a phantom stench of raw blood or fresh shit struck and then disappeared, leaving Fíli to gasp and cover his face. With no words to explain it, he simply stopped talking. 

Sometimes Kíli’s spirit abandoned his body without warning, returning with a violent start. More than once, he lost bodily control; shame quickly made a hermit of him. 

Night after night, the brothers woke up shouting and thrashing, drenched in sweat. Darkness became a blank canvas for bloody grotesqueries. When the time came to let the winter fires die out, they asked for an oil lamp, the type that would burn all night. Not even as children had they needed such a thing. What kind of Khuzd feels suffocated by the dark? 

Wakefulness changed their characters for the worse. As Fíli grew quieter, Kíli surrendered to noisy rages. Fenja gave them a pile of mismatched plates to throw at the courtyard wall when they felt unsteady. 

Within half an hour, shattered crockery littered the ground in drifts.


	6. Frozen

A strange affliction began to pursue Kíli. A thought, a sight, a random memory nailed him in place; he did not leave his body but remained stuck and shuddering inside it, too frightened to budge. His seizures at least afforded him the blessing of unconsciousness. These waking terrors demanded to be experienced second by second, in their entirety, by one able to hear, think, and feel but not move or speak. 

_Even when I want to,_ he told Fíli. _Even when being so still for so long begins to hurt._

During a terror, Fíli became his brother's literal body-servant. If he acted quickly, he could take Kíli someplace safe and lay him down before the rigor set in. He'd arrange him as comfortably as possible - Kíli could not do this for himself - and cover him with one of Thorin's old winter caftans for warmth and familiarity. Then he would lie down next to his _naddith_ , rub his back through the thick woolen felt, and talk soothingly to him. 

_We're safe, Zanid,_ he'd say. _It can't get us here._

Erebor. 

Never would Fíli forget the slap of dread that came upon crossing its threshold. Quiet and cold, smelling of wet ashes and metal, it instantly transformed them - even Thorin, for all his birthright - from conquering sons to common trespassers. He remembered the whimper that broke through Kíli's brave front; the still air swallowed it up without leaving so much as an echo. He realized then that Erebor neither hated nor loved nor recognized them as its own. It wouldn't notice whether they lived, and it wouldn't particularly mind if they died. They could come; they could go. It simply did not care. 

_(We should have gone, Zanid; we should have turned our backs, right then, right there, and run.)_

Erebor did not haunt like the other ghosts, for it was not dead. It waited in the east, steadfastly real and solid, exactly as the brothers remembered it. This is what made it the worst of all. To other Khazâd, it represented hope for the future; to Thorin's nephews, it was a sinkhole. Eliminate the dragon, double the gold, ratchet its glory up as high as heaven— it didn't matter. Erebor was a mortuary. An open mouth, devouring. Erebor would have its fill of them in the end. 

When Kíli's spirit left his body, Fíli wondered where it traveled. When it stayed locked inside, he never had to guess. Erebor had it; Erebor held it. No other place could strike such a chill into a living, beating heart. Yet when the thaw - excruciatingly slow - released an aching Kíli back into the world, he and Fíli refused to talk about it. 

What sort of fool speaks the name of a demon aloud?


	7. Breath

If Dís delighted in telling how Fíli tried to steal baby Kíli from her, it was because death had failed in the attempt only hours before. Her second-born had emerged into this world with the birth cord wound tight as a bird-snare around his neck. The midwives chafed his tiny limp body for a full anxious minute before he turned scarlet and bellowed like a bull. When Fíli insisted, _Mine!_ Dís hadn’t the strength to argue. 

For years afterward, whenever little Kíli felt frightened or angry, he held his breath. Every time he did this, it plunged the family into the same panic that attended his birth. Dís scolded, begged, cried; Thorin lay his nephew across his lap and clouted his shoulder blades until he gave in with a gasp. _Like a newborn,_ said Fenja— only Fíli was the one who cried. 

He himself had slipped into this world quietly (almost shyly, claimed Dís) but where his other half was concerned, Fíli threw away all restraint. If Kíli belonged to him body and soul, so did his breath, and he would not tolerate it ceasing for any reason. 

_Please, Nadad, please don’t be mad at me. I’m sorry._

Even today, Fíli remembered the flicker of torchlight in the stairwell; the lingering echo of anger; Kíli clinging to his arm like a beggar, sobbing. _I’m sorry, Fíli. I'm sorry. I don’t mean to._  
  
_Then why do you?_  
  
_I don’t know. I don’t know why._  
  
_Then stop! It’s not only you who would die!_

Fíli’s talk of death jarred Kíli so greatly that he did stop— then and there and for a long time after. From that day forward, whenever he felt the old urge, he turned to Fíli first. _Share with me,_ he pleaded, and they took in air together— not so they themselves should live, but the other as well.


	8. Safe

_Kíli, like this._

Fíli demonstrated with a deep lungful. 

Nothing. 

_Come on. Like this._

This time, a clandestine sip of air, shallow enough that no rise of rib would give Kíli away. 

_If I move, it will catch me,_ he once said of the terror. _If it thinks I’m dead, it will pass me by._  
  
_If you have to play dead, it has already caught you,_ countered Fíli. 

Like the midwives, like Thorin, he scrubbed his palm roughly up and down Kíli’s back and inhaled, exhaled, inhaled— 

_(like this, like this)_

—willing his brother to pick up the rhythm. 

At long last he felt Kíli’s ribs expand under his palm. _Yes; there. There!_ He kissed Kíli’s temple. _Again, again!_

Bit by bit the rigor loosened its hold; the defeated demon skulked away, leaving Kíli to fill his lungs on his own. His eyelids slowly peeled open; he looked up at Fíli with the raw, surprised eyes of one newly born. 

_There you are,_ Fíli rejoiced, stroking his brother’s cheek with the side of his finger. _I knew I’d see you again someday._  
  
_I…_ Kíli began. _I www…_  
  
_Yes, Naddith._  
  
_…want to go._ Kíli’s voice rattled like dry leaves. _I want to go, Fíli; can we go now?_

The question remained hanging, but Fíli realized with pity its unspoken end. 

_Soon,_ he replied, the lie twisting in his innards like a poisonous snake. _We'll go to Himling soon.  
_

_I want to go. Please, please, I want to go._  
  
_I know. But we can’t. Not right now._

Kíli began to weep hopelessly, grasping at his brother’s collar. _Share with me,_ he begged. _Share with me._

Clutching each other like children, they breathed in unison. 

When the danger had ebbed, Fíli did his own begging. _I’m sorry, Zanid. I’m sorry. I was foolish to go and foolish to bring you. I didn’t think what could happen to either of us; I only saw things my own way. Forgive me, Zanid; I won’t do it again. You’re safe here. We’re all safe here._  
  
_All safe,_ Kíli echoed, as if he believed it.


	9. Father

Once, long ago, Dís and Fenja sat in the kitchen talking about Fíli’s father Ganin, who would not be coming home that night. 

_He thought he’d show off his mettle,_ Dís remarked bitterly. _Thráin never quite believed he had any._

She did not mean to be callous at that moment, but she’d begged Ganin not to go and she’d been weeping for hours and had to stanch the flow— even with Durin irony, if it came right down to it. 

Fenja’s eyes snapped with sparks of fury at the boneheadedness of men, major and minor. _Fool,_ she spat, and while she truly meant Thráin, her expression told Fíli that the word could snap shut like a trap upon his own neck if he wasn’t careful. 

_Thorin,_ Dís whispered, as if some new sword-thrust had just pierced her. _Oh, Fenja— Thorin._

Fenja threw her a fearful side-look. Dís did not catch it but Fíli (sharp of ear and mind even as a child) did. Later – trembling from the spectacle of his uncle’s rage and grief – he understood it better. For now, it only seemed to him that his father had done something very, very stupid, and when he got home, he would certainly be in trouble for it. 

He inched back into the shadows under the staircase and whispered to Kíli, _I’m here. Be quiet._

___________________

Once, long ago – but not so long that Fíli’s shame had time to fade – Dís tousled her eldest’s wheat-colored hair and told him with fondness, _You look so like your father._  
  
_My father is dead,_ he retorted, ducking away from her hand. 

The exchange earned him two seconds of childish satisfaction at watching his mother turn pale, five lashes of a birch switch from a furious Thorin, and forty years of toe-curling self-disgust. 

It also marked the last time Thorin ever spoke of Ganin in front of Fíli— a silent but potent rebuke that left more scars than the birch switch.


	10. Enemy

Before they left for Erebor, Fíli and Kíli endured a long lecture about orc-lust— the zeal to kill that overtakes the young and feckless at the exact point when they know the least about life and death. 

_Why do you think Fenja and I carry hand-axes everywhere we go?_ Dís demanded. _When men roam, orcs hunt at home. You’ll be off killing them, and they’ll be here killing us. Or else you’ll go the way of your father– and where does that leave me?_

Back then Fíli had smirked and shrugged, young fool that he was. Now he came to Dís, raw-souled and red-eyed, and asked his questions with lowered head. 

_It was no unlucky ambush,_ Dís told him. _Your father went looking for them. There had been attacks on travelers on the high mountain pass; he wanted them to stop. I told him I needed him at home, but… he wanted to do the right thing for everyone, not just for me._ With a wan smile, she took one of Fíli’s braids in her fingers, turning it so that it caught the light. _Much like another I know.  
  
Where was Uncle?  
  
Journeying. Working. Trying to gather support. He was never the same after— a lasting shadow came over him. But you know this.  
  
Did… _Fíli could not find any way forward but to blurt it out. _Did they ever catch it? The orc that killed Father?_

Dís leveled a worried look at him. _Who knows? They’re animals; they can’t be told apart._

But though it brought him no peace, Fíli wondered. 

The orc he’d killed must have answered to something. Do such creatures have mothers who name them? Are they nursed and rocked as babes; do they have childhoods? Or do they simply appear overnight like maggots on meat? 

An animal’s life is short and brutal. Is it the same for orcs? How long do their lives last? Or do they, like the Elves, only die when someone kills them? 

Fíli’s orc had not been the only one he’d slaughtered that day, yet he remembered it with terrible clarity. Had it lived, would it have remembered him? Would they know one another if they met again? 

Why did the look in its eye stay with him? 

Why did it seem to know him?


	11. Whispers

_I watched the mace as it swung. I cou-couldn’t avoid it. I remember knowing it would hurt, and that I’d die of it, and I ff…felt so sad to never see you or Mother or Uncle again._

They sat on cushions near the cold hearth, heads close together. Kíli swayed slightly, hugging his knees. His nightmare had been the one to wake them, but it was life and not dream he and Fíli relived now. 

_When they flung me down the cliff face, every single second of falling seemed like an hour. I actually felt impatient to hit bottom and be done with it.  
  
Had Uncle…?  
  
Yes.  
  
You saw it?  
  
Yes. _Fíli squeezed his eyes shut. _But I can't see it now. I know it happened, and I should remember it, but instead it’s that one orc I see. That…_ thing, _in place of my own kinsman._ His shoulders drew up high in revulsion. _It keeps pushing in front of him. I don’t know why. It’s disgusting, unworthy of memory. I want to cut it out of myself like…_  
  
_I know._  
  
_I feel it; it stares at me night and day._

Kíli edged closer as if its foul spirit had just entered their room.

___________________

Another full moon; another lamp-lit sleepless night. 

Kíli nervously wiped his lips. _Do, do you sss…sometimes wish you could… gg-g-go to sleep and not wake up?_  
  
_Zanid!_ Startled, Fíli put his hand on Kíli’s chest and gave him a furious shove. 

_Nnno, no, I don’t mean—_  
  
_Brother, you had_ better _not._ In truth, Fíli's anger wasn't solely meant for Kíli. Hadn't that same wish visited him a time or two? 

_I’m sorry, Mim! I’m sorry!_ Kíli grasped Fíli’s wrist and lifted his clenched fist to kiss it. _I just, I just meant, if yyy-you could be asleep all through it and then open your eyes wwww... once it stopped, is all.  
  
Well… That’s been done, remember?_ Fíli reached to touch Kíli gently this time. _One of us alone was bad enough. But if we both slept, where would that leave Mother?_

Kíli sighed. _All alone. With_ our _ghosts._  
  
_So then. Better we contend with them than her. At least we know what they are._  
_____________________  
  
_When were you most scared?_  
  
_Through all of it?_  
  
_Yes._  
  
_When we were ssep-separated in the battle. I looked for you all around me but couldn't see you. And you?_  
  
_When you were right in front of me but you were still gone. You were here, but I couldn't find you._  
  
_Find me, Nnn...nadad._ And Kíli reached out into the darkness to touch Fíli, to prove his presence in the reaching, the touching; and in the darkness Fíli met Kíli's hand with his own, finding, being found.


	12. Silence

Khazâd spend a good deal of their lives silent. On open roads, deep in the earth, in lands peopled by strangers, they take great care not to give themselves away. But even with mouths closed, they communicate— with their eyes, their hands, their bodies. This is _iglishmêk_ , the speech unspoken. 

Taught early, grasped quickly, _iglishmêk_ keeps dwarven bonds strong amid the stresses of nomadic life. Even at home – where speech is free and full of passion, where love and ire and laughter pour as liberally as ale – there is _iglishmêk_. Watching grownups use it, Khuzd children squirrel it away one sign at a time. 

Fíli and Kíli had dutifully memorized all of the hand-signs of mead-hall, forest, forge, battlefield. But these are designed for distance. How can two brothers speak in these signs when they are never more than a hair’s breadth apart? 

They made their own _iglishmêk_. A slight lean. The barest nudge of elbow. A ghostly stroke of fingertip over a wrist, to warn, quieten, encourage. Playful rune messages traced on skin in bed at night. Touch upon touch upon touch; bodies in constant conversation. 

A sign can be shared between two Khazâd only. Others never ask its meaning; secrets are to be honored. Fíli and Kíli possessed three: one for Thorin, one for Mother, one for each other. The first two told of a coming or going, footsteps nearing or fading away. The third said, _I’m here. I'm here._

Some days, this was all the brothers had the strength to say. 

Shared nightmares are said to lose their power in the telling. This is a lie. The nightmares continued, as did the visions and fits and memories; eventually, all stories told, Fíli and Kíli ran out of words. There was no one they could talk to except each other and nothing left to tell. Perhaps this is when and why they began to look at each other more— to keep their eyes trained on something they trusted until the thing they feared gave up and moved on. After it did, they just forgot to stop looking, that's all.


End file.
